Taking to the Skies: a Pilgrimage to Make 'the Freshest Brewed Beer on the Market'

How FlyteCo Brewing gets “fresh-off-the-bine” hops

 

This experience meant the opportunity to take a small passenger airplane to Montrose (a 4.5-hour drive from Denver but just an hour flight) and visit a local hop farm to gather fresh-picked hops that we’d then take back to their Denver brewery and immediately use to brew the “freshest beer on the market.”

But it’s important to note that this annual trek is not easy to plan or navigate. Summer weather in Colorado (especially around mountain landscapes) can be quite unpredictable. The team plans for this experience knowing they’re likely to make the journey sometime in mid-late August when the hops are at their freshest, but ultimately, everyone is at Mother Nature’s mercy regarding the safety of taking the flight. Although I had a general idea of when to plan for the trip (if we were actually lucky enough to make it happen), I didn’t get an official greenlight I’d be joining the journey until roughly 36 hours before we took to the skies.

On the morning of, my alarm woke me at 5:30 a.m. from a very light (I was excited) sleep to drive to the Erie airport for our 6:30 a.m. meetup time. As I was on my way to the airport, I’ll admit I was a bit apprehensive (not because I am afraid of flying, in fact, I enjoy it so much that I think I was actually a bird) but because I had not yet even met any of these people except for a quick, kind check-in message from Serani the day before the flight to ensure I knew where and when to go. And I was about to spend a whole day on this almost intimately exclusive, adventurous journey with them.

I didn’t want to crash their party. Did I deserve to be taking up one of those rare, coveted seats in one of their small airplanes? But I was ultimately won over by my curiosity and the opportunity to explore such a unique adventure.

Up in the air

The sun was just rising over the mountains on the horizon as I pulled into the parking lot of the small municipal airport about 30 minutes north of downtown Denver.

I knew I had made the right decision as soon as I arrived and stepped onto the tarmac, to be greeted by Serani (he’s been flying for 19 years)—who I could tell was absolutely ecstatic about the opportunity to combine his passions of flying and fermentation. He was generously enthusiastic about sharing the adventure.

“It’s a pretty great day,” Serani proclaimed as we squeezed into the compact aircraft and took off just after 7 a.m. “We get to fly airplanes and make beer.”

I watched as small airplanes began to touch down from other destinations across Colorado to join us on this journey, landing on the runway and taxiing to park in a neat line. FlyteCo organizes this event each year, and other pilots in the Denver aviation community are invited to join the special experience. It gives longtime fans of FlyteCo the chance to get a behind-the-scenes peek at everything that goes into making the beer (and is great for keeping their skills as pilots sharp).

Origins of an epic collaboration

The annual gathering dates back to 2019 when founder and owner of Bruz Beers, Ryan Evans, was camping at another Colorado hops farm and sent Serani photos of the nearby airport, asking if he’d want to fly up and brew a fresh hop beer.

“Two weeks later, we flew out, and brewed the beer we called ‘Hop Is My Copilot,’” Serani says.“We’ve kept the collaboration beer alive every year since then.”

In 2020 Serani began reaching out to other pilots to join in on the fun experience, and the team has since made Billy Goat Hop Farm their spot. The team still considers this beer a collaboration with Bruz (but the Bruz crew couldn’t come this year since they were on their annual trip to Belgium). After a quick schedule briefing and pre-flight safety check, our group of 20 people—which consisted of FlyteCo folks, media members, and local pilots and fellow beer aficionados—spread out across eight airplanes and took to the skies.

“We didn’t need so many airplanes to transport the hops,” says Serani.” “It was more so a community experience for the other pilots who joined on the adventure. Flying is a perishable skill, and planning and executing complicated flights in small airplanes is a great way for pilots to fight complacency.”

Back up in the air

 

The flight to Montrose took about an hour, during which we spied Colorado’s diverse geographic landscapes from above and soared through the narrow mountain passes. Serani warned us not to worry when he banked at a 45-degree angle while expertly navigating through a more precarious-looking mountain pass—he assured us it’s part of the flying technique to keep the aircraft stable.

I gazed out at the dense thickets of trees, which normally would present themselves as a thick, dark forest, but now appeared unintimidating from our perch in the sky—soft tips of a fuzzy blanket spread out across the rolling hills. It was a potent reminder of all the powerful beauty the Earth can showcase and produce for us—and a great taste of what was to come, when we’d make it to the hop farm and literally “taste” the fruits and flowers of the land.

Hoppy trails

We landed in Montrose around 8 a.m. and shuttled out to the independently-owned and sustainability-focused Billy Goat Hop Farm. Billy Goat is unique in its location—most hops are traditionally grown in the Pacific Northwest, in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Once on the farm, we took a tour of the facility’s 32 acres led by owner Audrey Gehlhausen. We wandered through the neat lines of trellised land that grow a variety of hops on 57 miles of cable. In May, each of the 60,000 threads of coconut coir is strung to the cable on top of the 18-foot-tall trellis and tied by hand. In fact, everything is done by hand here. I had no idea there were so many different varieties of hops. Billy Goat Hop Farm grows dozens of types of hops, from comet to magnum to chinook, nugget, crystal, and more. We learned from Gehlhausen that it’s a quick process from tying to picking. The hop bines (not vines) grow nearly a foot a day in July before they’re ready for harvest in mid-August. “You can almost literally watch them grow,” Gehlhausen laughs, “they want to climb.”

Growing and processing the hops is an extremely calculated, scientific process that requires hours of physical manual labor and a whole lot of care for the craft.

While we strolled through the lines of bines, I relished breathing in the fresh, earthy scent of ripe hop plants. We picked a few hop flowers off the bine and tasted them—not by biting into them, but by lightly touching the tip of our tongue to the inside—and it was very bitter (almost as if you were to bite straight into and take a chunk out of the strongest IPA you’ve ever tasted).

“What does it taste like?” one of the other media members on the trip asked me on camera for her video. “Hoppy!” I exclaimed, and we both laughed.

After the bines are chopped down individually and fed into their “Wolf picker” (which separates the hops from their bine), they’re dried, cooled, pelletized, and packaged for transport. But on our trip, our main purpose wasn’t to take home packaged product—it was to bag and take home fresh hops. Around 10:30 a.m., we packed two hefty 20-pound burlap sacks of hop flowers into our SUVS, and returned to the Montrose airport to fly back to Denver to begin brewing this epically innovative beer.

A pilgrimage for a passion for beer making

Watching the crew stuff hop sacks into the rear of our airplane, I understood why Serani had messaged me the day before our journey to ensure I wouldn’t need to bring any extra load of equipment to chronicle the experience; we needed the space and room for reserving weight that’d fit the previous cargo—our bags of fresh hops.

We filed one by one back into the skies, with the inside of our airplane smelling heavenly. We took a different flight path back to Denver since the turbulent mountain afternoon weather had begun to roll in, making the winds stronger and the ride a bit more bumpy. Sailing over well-known points of interest like Red Rocks Amphitheater and pointing out beloved landmarks like Pikes Peak off in the distance, we cruised back into the Denver metropolitan area in less time than it took to get to Montrose, riding the tailwinds.

Back at the brewery

After touching down in Erie and processing what felt like much longer than a few hours of adventure, it was time to transport these hops to the brewery to begin making this year’s “Hop is my Copilot” brew.

I drove back to urban Denver and met up with the team at FlyteCo’s Tennyson Street location, where the beer is brewed. Their FlyteCo Tower location is super cool, too – it’s a brewery, bar, restaurant, and entertainment venue all in one—located inside an authentic former air traffic control tower. There’s three levels, three full bars, and an outdoor patio in its 25,000 square feet of on-site space.

But the OG spot on Tennyson Street is where the brewing magic actually happens

Upon arrival, the inside of the brewery felt as if a family came together to make and serve a holiday meal. One of the co-owner’s children was asking for quarters to play the arcade games in the corner, as head brewer Jason Slingsby stirred in the inaugural slop of hops.

I looked around and realized I enjoyed being here because breweries like this are what the craft beer industry was founded on and, disappointingly, struggles to maintain today due to a slowly altering attitude toward craft beer—and alcohol, in general, among the younger generations. It was, and here remains, a community boasting an atmosphere saying “everyone is welcome.”

FlyteCo’s Tennyson location offers multiple communities a space to gather and share a love of aviation and craft beer. As soon as you walk in, you’ll spy the metal model fuselage that was created true to size—a scale replica of a Boeing 737—and yes, you can sit underneath while you drink your beer. The walls are adorned with decor like unique aviation patches, and the arcade games chirp nostalgic jingles off in the corner, making you feel like a kid again (while also being old enough to drink a solid beer).

In fact, in the classic spirit of innovation, this location just started to offer a revolutionary “membership program” dubbing itself a “FlyteCoworking” space—similar to a normal coworking space (but better—because “beer”). It’ll operate as a private, limited member “third space” (the space you go to other than home and work) Monday-Friday from opening until 2 p.m. (11 a.m. on Friday) when it will transition into its normal, open-to-the-public brewery model.

There’s a sign inside that says the brewery just invested in upgrading its Wi-Fi. Members will enjoy special prices for beverages and a safe, social space to work outside of home. Personally, as a travel writer, I work at coffee shops nearly every other day (even when I’m home, in Denver), so why not try working somewhere where something a bit *stronger* is brewed (they’ll, of course, also serve their members coffee).

Blending two passions to brew a great beer

The fresh hop flight experience was unforgettable—but even for those who can’t embark on such a unique, once-in-a-lifetime adventure, there’s still the beer to be enjoyed. Once you stop into FlyteCo and have a conversation with any of their bartenders, owners who frequently spend time on-site, or indulge in one of their “flytes” (or a pint), you’re bound to “land” here again the next time you’re in Denver.